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After a multi-year renovation of its home, the Maine State Archives has launched a new online platform for publicly accessible, digitized and born-digital public records.
Called Open Access, the platform is the public-facing side of an effort to maintain a digital preservation system for records of state government. The system ensures the long-term preservation and accessibility of state records that are archival or subject to long-term retention.
“From the beginning, I have been committed to improving efficiency and modernizing our systems to benefit Mainers and streamline access,” said Shenna Bellows, Maine secretary of state.
“Open Access will provide improved government transparency in a user-friendly platform that will be continuously expanded as more and more collections are imaged,” Bellows added.
Five centuries of docs
The archives’ collections span five centuries, from the 1639 royal land grant to Sir Ferdinand Gorges to the 2024 papers of the Lewiston Tragedy Commission. One section of the site is devoted to Maine history before statehood, highlighting important records such as Revolutionary War land grants and the Rolls and Rosters Book of Orders for the 8th Division of the Maine Militia. The records of Maine’s involvement in the Civil War are extensive.
So far, Open Access holds just over 100,000 imaged records.
“With more than eight miles of documents in the archives’ care, there is a long way to go to digitize them all, but it’s a great start,” said Christian Cotz, the state archivist. “We’re excited to continue to add records to the platform and provide Mainers from students to researchers with even more to discover each time they visit the site.”
The Maine State Archives, Maine State Library and Maine State Museum are housed in the Maine State Cultural Building, which underwent a $53 million renovation that's wrapping up this year.
